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Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Mormons: Please Just Tell the Truth

An excellent article by Bob Burney at TownHall makes a very clear point....Hey folks, believe whatever you want to, but don't try to pull the wool over anyone's eyes because you don't feel comfortable with the truth.

An interesting illustration of this has been playing itself out in current political news. In an interview with the New York Times Magazine, presidential candidate Mike Huckabee was questioned about his views of the Mormonism of fellow candidate Mitt Romney. Huckabee said he knew little about Mormonism and wondered out loud to the veteran religion reporter Zev Chafets: “Don’t Mormons believe that Jesus and the devil are brothers?” Well, that’s exactly what they believe! Several news outlets immediately accused Huckabee of attacking Romney’s religion. Blogs went berserk!

How did candidate Romney respond to someone revealing what his church actually believes? He said, “But I think attacking someone’s religion is really going too far. It’s just not the American way, and I think people will reject that,” Romney told NBC’s “Today” show.

How did the LDS Church respond? The Associated Press quoted an official spokeswoman for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that Huckabee’s question is usually raised “by those who wish to smear the Mormon faith rather than clarify doctrine.” She went on to say, “We believe, as other Christians believe and Paul wrote, that God is the father of all … That means that all beings were created by God and are his spirit children. Christ, on the other hand, was the only begotten in the flesh and we worship him as the son of God and the savior of mankind. Satan is the exact opposite of who Christ is and what he stands for.”

She doesn’t deny anything Huckabee said, she is just very deft at using the language of and the association with mainstream Christianity to wrap their unorthodox doctrine in credibility.

Does this have anything to do with Mitt Romney and his qualifications to be president? Everyone will have to decide that in his or her own heart. I just wish the Mormons, including Mitt Romney, would simply be more candid and tell us the straight truth about their religion. Is that too much to ask?